But at least we get this piece of good news.  I'm with the sentiment that you pay Ben what you need to so he's locked up for the long term.  While football's a team sport having a franchise quarterback means more than anything.  

Moore's a good football player and I'd be happy to have him.  He's not too much of an upgrade returner-wise.  Much like rossum he's solid and doesn't make many mistakes.  But he doesn't have break-out speed and vision.

1. We keep Ben in all likelihood for the entirety of his career. Woohoo!!!
   
2. As great as the news is about Ben, I never had a doubt the Steelers would get it done. However, I wasn't as positive the Steelers would also be able to afford or be focused on providing him with better weapons. I liked Moore early on; he is a terrific receiving threat and an upgrade on Davenport. Here are two links to stories about Moore:  http://www.footballdiner.com/sammonson2.html which I posted on a BTSC review of the RB position, about three weeks ago; and this one: http://vikingsragnarok.blogspot.com/2007/01/look-at-offense-needing-more-moore.html ... He's a quality player and person who should at least equal Rossum's KO return numbers and be a major upgrade on PR.
   
3. The timing is positive. It means the team has its priorities right. It means we have the cap space to make things happen without a lot of cap casualties at least to this point. The breakdown of the yearly salary cap hits will tell us a little more about that, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Steelers are trying to make deals to ship out Wilson and Davenport for late-round draft picks. If Rossum cost us a 7th-rounder, surely Wilson could be worth a 6th or 7th while saving $2 mill against the cap. Same thinking applies to Davenport (saving $1.2 mill), but anyone interested in him might just wait until he gets cut, which is inevitable.
   
4. I still expect us to sign a decent FA d-lineman (such as another ex-Viking, Darrion Scott) but that could depend on whether Starks comes back. Hard to imagine we could re-sign Starks and another FA, in addition to Moore, but there are stories linking us to Cincy MLB Landon Johnson and NE S Eugene Wilson.
   
5. What's become apparent is that the Steelers have a specific plan in place and that the pieces are coming together in spite of our alleged Cap difficulties. We don't know that plan yet but as fans it's certainly fun to speculate. Perhaps the Transition Tag on Starks is a smokescreen to kill outside interest in him or hide our interest in someone else (center Rex Hadnot, guard Jacob Bell or tackle Sean Locklear). Perhaps there is another plan in the works to release or trade a veteran who takes up significant cap space (Farrior, Simmons, Foote or Townsend).  Simmons seems unlikely because of the dead money involved in his remaining four years, but the dead money could be pushed over to next year and his relatively low base salary over four years makes him attractive to other teams, perhaps worth a 3rd or 4th rounder. If we re-sign Starks, then we have a number of veteran guard candidates (Kemo, Colon and Mahan) and perhaps Brandon Albert. Farrior is likely gone after this year and perhaps a plan to cut or trade him is the reason there is interest in Johnson, who was the Bengals leading tackler three of the last four years. Interest in Wilson might indicate that Clark's illness and slow recovery is career-threatening.

That said, Ben's ultra-competitiveness should only drive him more after this payday. But he's going to need to prove his leadership a little more in the locker room because this kind of money dwarfs the contracts of even the highly respected and well paid veterans like Ward or Polamalu and could cause some resentment.

Any word yet on the year by year breakdown and how spread out the guaranteed money is?

http://pit.scout.com/2/696649.html